When it comes to vices, full fat cookies, great beer, and friendly competition rank high on our list. So, to celebrate the season, we combined our favorite things and held a good 'ole fashioned cookie baking competition and holiday beer tasting.

THE BAKE-OFF

We were initially going to post all the recipes so you could try them out for yourself, but people got competitive busy before the holidays, so you'll just have to live vicariously through the pictures. The competition was fierce, but Linsey Rosen's salted chocolate chip cookie was the clear favorite followed closely by Henock's ice cream sandwich goodness and David's (Grandmother’s) award winning sugar cookie. Of course the real winners were the folks that got to eat eleven cookies in one sitting.

THE COMPETITION

Cookie: Henock's Chocolate Espresso Ice Cream Cookies
Baker: “Le Hammock Chef” Beyen
Recipe: Google Martha Stewart + Snoop Dogg
Reason it’s great: The sum of chocolate, espresso, love, smooth jazz and mo’ chocolate.

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Cookie: Linsey's Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookie
Baker: Linsey Rosen
Recipe: Marry a wonderful cook
Reason it's great: You’ll see.

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Cookie: “Collin’s” Corn Cookies
Baker: Collin
Recipe: Absolutely, definitely my own recipe.
Reason it’s great: corn

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Cookie: Grandma’s little sugar balls ahem
Baker: Davie Loops
Recipe: none of your damn business
Reason it’s great: best damn sugar cookies you’ll ever have

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Cookie: Orange & Molasses Spice Cookies
Baker: Stacey
Recipe: Straight outta Baking Illustrated
Reason it’s great: They’re like adult Christmas in your mouth in a totally SFW way.

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Cookie: Almond crescent cookies.
Baker: Lisa Carter
Recipe: Written on a card somewhere in an envelope at the bottom of a pile of other old recipes
Reason it’s great: Grandma’s recipe, tweaked to perfection. Also great with coffee.

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Cookie: Oatmeal Raisin (Cookies Don’t Need To Be Fun)
Baker: Michael Ramuta
Recipe: Start with chocolate chip cookies and replace all the good stuff
Reason it’s great: Oatmeal can help lower cholesterol

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Cookie: Melt-in-your-mouth M&M cookies
Baker: O’Malley
Recipe: Just the good stuff- 2 sticks of butter and a family-sized package of M&M’s.
Reason it’s great: Candy + cookies =)

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Cookie: Oatmeal Chocolate-Cherry
Baker: Brad (via Teena and Evan)
Recipe: The usual cookie ingredient suspects, plus Montmorency cherries, and the holiday delight of a four-year old (I’m pretty sure she washed her hands before making them)
Reason it’s great: You’ll know why once they’re in your mouth

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Cookie: Mies van der Dough
Baker: Elisabeth
Recipe: Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value.
Reason it’s great: Less is more.

THE TASTING

For our Beer Tasting, Michael Gump created a detailed tasting scorecard, descriptions, and scoured the city for holiday brews to include in the tasting. St. Bernardus Christmas Ale was our favorite, and Thirsty Dog's 12 Dogs of Christmas, Revolution's Fistmas, and Begyle’s Christmas Ale also received a lot of love.

FEATURED SELECTIONS

1. Begyle Christmas Ale

2. Rogue Santa’s Reserve

3. Delirium Noel

4. Anchor Christmas Ale

5. St. Bernardus Xmas Ale

6. Great Lakes Christmas Ale

7. Revolution Fistmas

8. Thirsty Dog 12 Dogs of Christmas

On a warm and fuzzy note, the best part of this activity was getting the whole gang together to share some of our favorite holiday recipes and booze.

Happy Holidays to all, see you in 2017!